𝓢𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓷 𝓓𝓸𝓸𝓻𝓼

3

I slept badly again that night. I kept hearing a faint knocking sound in my sleep, but whenever I woke up it would cease, and I could only hear the soft sounds of my parents and brothers sleeping in the rooms around me. At 3am I even got up, walked down to the landing and checked the front door, but no one was there.

My mom woke me up at 6:45am. My alarm had been blaring for the past five minutes, and I hadn’t even heard it. She said she had to shake me a few times to get me up. I felt like my head was stuffed with sandpaper; at the time I didn’t know what a hangover felt like, but looking back, I definitely peeled out of bed as if I’d participated in an all night rager.

It was dumping rain that day. When we met at lunch at one of the corner cafeteria tables, everyone immediately started talking about how we’d squeeze our next session in. The woods were completely out; it was raining hard enough that the ground would be muddy swampland for the next few days. It was Friday, and if Elia didn’t take her turn today it would mean waiting until Monday to find out what was behind the black door, if the weather cooperated. Frankly, I was kind of in favor of stopping the game altogether, but when I said as much, I got quite a bit of backlash.

“Kat, we know it’s scary but we don’t know anything about it. Maybe Elia’s right and we’re just scared of it because it’s…you know, unknown.” Emory softened her words with a peace offering of jo-jos from her plate, which I reluctantly accepted.

“I don’t know, you guys. It’s not just that we don’t know what’s behind it. We don’t know what’s behind at least four of the doors and even the doors we’ve opened are still a little bit of a mystery. It just feels so…invasive. Like it’s doing everything it can to get us to open it, almost leaving us no choice but to open it. It’s not a door that we previously knew was going to be in the forest. And it showed up inside our clearing! I thought the clearing was supposed to be like a safe zone, where we pop in and out?” I stuffed a piping hot jo-jo in my mouth. When the world crashes onto your head, let the starchy warmth of spiced middle-school cafeteria fries be your comfort.

“I brought that up to Jay last night on the phone,” Lauranne said quietly. “She said technically we never decided to set the clearing as a safe-zone, or whatever. Some of us just assumed it would be safe because nothing’s ever followed us into it before.”

Elia sat down next to me, slapping her lunch tray on the linoleum cafeteria table. “I just called my mom from the pay phone in the hall,” she announced. “If you guys want, she’s cool with having everyone over for a sleepover tonight.” Elia rubbed her hands together, silent picture villain-esque. “She’s working a night shift so we won’t even have to keep the screaming down.” She winked at Lauranne, who coolly flipped her off.

A few had to check with their parents, including me. Shina (I called her S in a previous post, because I needed time to check that she was okay with me posting her name) said that she had plans already and couldn’t make it. Jay joined us halfway through lunch, apparently caught in a long lecture by one her teachers, and said she would definitely be at Elia’s house later.

“Are you sure you want to do this in your house?” Aubrey asked. “I mean…we’ve always done it in the woods.” She seemed about to say something else, but changed her mind at the last minute, and began stabbing at the steamed vegetables on her plate listlessly.

Elia shrugged. “Not my first choice, but I don’t want to wait three days to find out what’s behind the door. I’m worried if we wait too long it won’t be there when we get back.” She smiled wickedly. “Besides, if something follows me back to my house, maybe it’ll eat my sister first?”

Elia lived with her mom and older sister on the lower south side of my home town; not the wealthiest of neighborhoods, but still clean, respectable, and only a little run down. Her mom was a nurse who had been pulling late night/early morning shifts for the past two years, so she was on her way out once we were all situated, sleeping bags strewn over the tiny living room, with three ordered pizzas and a massive box of diet cokes on the counter. After repeatedly telling us to call her if we needed her for anything, she left; the moment her little Toyota pulled out of the gravel drive and disappeared down the road, everyone turned in silent unison and looked at Jay.